Travel
by ClosetFMAfan
Summary: When the road seems long, the burden on your back too heavy to carry, and there's no reason for you to go on, all you can do is think about how far you've come and think of the reason you have to keep going. AlMei Week.


**Now I think I was terribly clever with this prompt. I'm rather proud of it :D**

* * *

Alphonse Elric stared down at the large gauntlets that had become his hands. It was so hard to think of it… to think that this was his body now. This large suit of armor that had always sat in the corner of their dad's study. It used to scare him when he was a kid. He was still a kid. He had gone from four and a half feet to seven in the space of a few hours. And he couldn't even feel it when he bumped into doorframes. He was only barely aware of his head coming off the first time.

His head had come _off._

Al would have felt sick to his stomach if he had still had one.

He couldn't eat anymore. He couldn't smell. He couldn't feel. He couldn't grab things for fear of holding them too tightly and crushing them.

He couldn't even cry.

No moisture would ever leak from the holes in his armor that constituted as his eyes to rust the metal face plate. But in the dark hours all alone, Al still put his face in his giant hands—so large, so dangerous—and willed the tears to come.

* * *

It wasn't the first time she had considered giving up.

Day after day after day and nothing ever changed. Nothing but the sun and the heat and the sand everywhere. The sun was relentless, never failing to be just right above her. The heat only went away at night to be replaced by frigid cold that made the Xingese princess want to curl up in a ball. The sand was always moving around her, chaffing against her skin. After only a few days she learned to cover all of her face but her eyes and to keep those as squinted as possible. Xiao Mei was her only comfort and at sometimes the only reason she kept going.

But then there came these days. These days when she couldn't walk another step, her body simply wouldn't let her. She would fall to her knees and sink down in the sand and then fall face first into it.

Xiao Mei, displaced by her fall, ran over to her master's face and squeaked, terrified. Mei's eyes opened and she moved her arm just enough to scratch the panda on the head.

"I think I was foolish to do this, Xiao Mei," she confessed, voice hoarse and full of despair. There was a pause that might have last second or minutes or hours, she didn't know.

"You were always a good pet. My best friend…" Her eyes closed and Xiao Mei began to squeak again, nuzzling her face.

"I can't go on…" The squeaks grew more desperate before finally growing despairing.

Why had she ever thought she could do this? She was just one girl with a small panda. There was no way. She was foolish and never should have done it. She was going to die here and only her clan would mourn her.

Her clan…

Her clan. She could not disappoint them. She could not. She would not.

And so, despite the physical pain it caused her and her body crying out screaming to just stop, just die here, Mei Chang struggled back onto her knees and then her feet and continued to stumble through the sand, panda once again on her shoulder.

* * *

"Stone! Stone! Philosopher's Stone!"

Father was staring right at them for a few moments and Mei couldn't breathe. Then he looked away and she sighed, until she realized he had laid his sights directly on Edward who was trapped. His automail arm had been blown away and his left was impaled on a spike from the foundations.

"Get out of there, Edward!" she heard Hohenheim yelling. Mei crawled onto her knees but her head felt so woozy when she tried to do anything else.

"Brother! Run!" she heard Al scream. "Brother!" Now Ed was pulling at his arm, but even from the distance, Mei could tell it was painful and he was losing too much blood trying.

"Stop!" Al screamed even louder as Father moved closer. He stretched until his chest cavity started to break and crumble again. "Damn it!"

"Al!" she screamed as he fell over. This was not good. Even so, Al lifted himself up on his arms.

"Stop! Stop! Let brother… let brother..." he couldn't even get the words out. Then suddenly he stopped, as if struck. He seemed to take a breath, though Mei knew he didn't and couldn't take in air.

"Mei, I need a favor," he said in a completely calm voice. It scared her more than the screaming. "Brother sacrificed his right arm to bring my soul back. So it follows that the reverse should be possible."

Mei's eyes grew wide as she realized exactly what he was proposing. He couldn't give up his soul. He couldn't! If he did, it was possible he would never come back.

"Alphonse…"

In the distance Father was stumbling even closer to Ed.

"All you have to do is clear a path for me." He turned his head so he was staring directly at her. "You can do that, right?"

Oh yes, she could do that. In fact it even made perfect sense. Since they didn't have a complicated circle and Ed was so far away he would need her alkahestric markers to guide the alchemy to Ed. Otherwise a disconnected arm might just show up. But he would still have to pay the price.

"But if you do that, Alphonse…"

"There's not time!" he said sharply, looking directly at her. "Please!" Then in a slightly softer voice, "You're the only one I can ask to do this."

She stared at him, her eyes grow big as the tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn't let him do something like this- she shouldn't help himself effectively commit suicide. If she didn't though, she knew that not only would Ed die and Father win, but Al would have nothing to live for. His brother was his life. Not being her prince, not alchemy, but his brother. Ed had already saved his life and now he was trying to save him. Mei lowered her head in defeat.

"Stone," she heard Father shout as she quickly dropped the kunai's into the stone around Al. They had to be perfect for it to work. "Human, Give me," She took careful aim. "your energy!"

Hohenheim shouted his son's name, and that's when she let her knives fly.

* * *

"And as they walked up the road together, the dog started to bark. Al looked at the dog and smiled, wondering if he would remember him. But then he did! And he jumped on him and started licking his face. But the barking told Winry that there was something up, so she got up and walked to the front door… and there were her two best friends. Ed had his arm and Al had his body."

"What happened then?" one of the piles of blankets asked. Al smiled softly.

"Well, Winry was so happy she started to cry and she ran at them and gave them both big hugs, and welcomed them home."

"And then what?" the opposite pile of blankets asked.

"I know!" the first one said. "They lived happily ever after! Right Daddy?" Al chuckled slightly and pulled the covers down to kiss his daughter on the forehead.

"Exactly. Now go to bed." She grinned toothily at him and rolled over. His son already had his eyes firmly shut by the time Al kissed him and closed the door.

He found Mei in his own room a few moments later, hovering over a cradle near the foot of their bed. "She just went to sleep," she whispered to him. He nodded and peeked in the cradle long enough to run his fingers through the black fuzz on his youngest daughter's head.

Then he turned around and smiled at his wife.

"I finished telling them the story tonight."

"You did? All the way?"

"Well, all the way up to us coming home. Winry tackles us and welcomes us home, tears pouring down her face. The end. Happily Ever After."

Mei snorted softly. "If only."

"As far as lives go, I would say we've done pretty good, especially considering where we came from and the things we've gone through." Mei smiled softly and thought of the girl lost in the desert, about to give up, and realized everything she would have missed out on if she had. Al watched her gently and remembered how hopeless he had felt those years, and how much he had gained from it.

"It's been a long road to travel."

"It has… but the journey's been worth it, don't you think?"

"Yes. Yes it has."


End file.
